Here's an attempt to put together some of the requests of our nice little community.

Please post your feature requests to the thread and I will add them and try to compile an overview of most wanted.
(numbering is arbitrary and for short term reference, as items will be added and resorted)

Report sales without markup

Fix markup matrix for large shops: Breakdown per section / 10 rows per page to speed up / Hide models not for sale/Show only model not for sale.

Improve site loading time, replace unnecessary ajax.

Better markup management on product page, add a "to all" button

Triple check the buying flow (add to cart vs order now)

Modelnumbers in order overview.

Order and orderline numbers in shipping email

Shipped dates in order overview

Personal orders in order overview

Resubmit/Edit previous orders

Rich description for each shop section (as current shop description)

Make separate page of old shop-inventory, current old version has reload issues.

Allow edit of shop-section names

Allow sorting of shop-sections

Long model names in order overview.

Allow to move an object at the end/beginning of the list in the new product inventory and to move it to the next/previous "page", exactly as in the old inventory (a page could be a group of 8 objects for instance): one position at a time is not really efficient.

Allow more than two lines of products in the old inventory

Allow the editing of picture caption in product page (not only at upload time)

Allow sorting of pictures in product page

Allow more than one video in the product page

Full model names in shipping email

Differentiation between customer and personal orders in shipping email

Excel/CSV export/import feature, so we can mass edit all data for all models offline.

Impossible to order co-creator items when "Listed on site" option is un-set. (private co-creator?)

Shapeways should not cancel co-creator orders without contacting the designer, allowing to fix the error

Fix the Material filter in the Gallery's Product (see for instance the category dice, where you will see that all dice seem to be available in any material, which they are not.

Fix the Category selection, it is not consistent: for the first sub-category it is OK if you check the category and then the sub-category, but for the second if you check first a category you cannot check any of its sub-category anymore.

Allow URL with brackets in the forum posts or remove any bracket from Shapeways URL's, because brackets break links.

Fix count between brackets in shops section, the amount currently does not correlate with actual amount of public items. Magics jewels contains 27 items, page right bottom says 29

Co-creator bug: sometimes an item from order overview does not appear on todo-list and designer does not get an email with link. The current fix/work-around is not clear.

Improve communication about incidental manual fixes and workarounds.

A "model page" as the customer sees, having a separate browser session to do so is cumbersome.

The "model edit" pages as we see them now also have grown a bit beyond practical : "Choose a material" and "Related products" take up a lot space which could be more useful for editing things related to the model.

The "Private Galleries" bit on the model page, has been superseded by "shop sections"? If not not used, why not hide it?

Some sort of mini material matrix/list on the product page, so we can see all material markups for that model and use check boxes to enable/disable materials. Also instead of the sluggish "Not available in:" stuff.

Reverse the awkward "Not available in" / "Add to unavailable" logic to the more logical "Model is designed for / printable in".

For private models, on order rejection, do not fiddle with the materials list, do not set to "Not available".

Consistent order numbers in each and every message ex. "Your model has been shipped" has no order number at all
ex. "Your order 36794 at Shapeways" and "Shapeways | Order 133629 was cancelled" have no apparent relation

Consistent, sortable subject lines in each and every message
ex. "Your order 36794 at Shapeways"and "Shapeways | Order 133629 was cancelled" cannot be sorted by any means.

A consistent information block in each and every message. Less blah-blah, more information: model number and names, order numbers, order dates, est. production dates, shipping dates, etc. etc.

Order time in order overview

Geographical location in order overview

Allow youtube as image replacement at top of product page/Allow placement of youtube video in description using [video] or similar tag.

Update dates when there are new delays with on going orders, maybe even send an email.

In the product page, have a checkbox to indicate if hooks are to be added to the package for earrings (and later necklace for pendants, as soon as necklaces are re-introduced).

13. Allow to move an objet at the end/begining of the list in the new product inventory and to move it to the next/previous "page", exactly as in the old inventory (a page could be a group of 8 objects for insance): one position at a time is not really efficient.

14. Allow more than two lines of products in the old inventory

15. Allow the edition of picture caption in product page (not only at upload time)

What a list! Just so ya know, this thread has been seen, and we'll be digging to see what's going on with known items, and add ones that aren't already on the to do list. Luckily all I have to do is point these out, and don't actually have to do the fixing .

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me. -Maya Angelou
michael@shapeways.com Community Advocate

- Fix the Material filter in the Gallery's Product (see for instance the category Dice where you will see that all dice seem to be available in any material)
- Fix the Category selection, it is not consistent: for the first sub-category it is OK if you check the category and then the sub-category, but for the second if you check first a category you cannot check any of its sub-category anymore (ex: if I want to set an item to Game->Dice and Art -> Mathematical Art, you should let met check Game/Dice/Art/Mathematical Art - that is categories and sub-categories - OR only Dice/Mathematical Art that is sub-categories only but not the current inconsistent system where I can select Game/Dice/Art - that is 3 checkboxes -and get stuck because Mathematical Art is not checkable anymore)

[EDIT] another one : allow URL with square brackets in the posts or remove any square bracket from Shapeways URL's
Example: this URL cannot be linked automatically (using the link button or just writing the URL in the text of the post):

You though I had two hidden pieces of jewelry?
This is not the case, actually (I also see 27 items when logged)...
So, you are right: this is a bug; but not related to hidden items...
Question: what about separating bugs from new features? (perhaps it is a bad idea, just asking)

Plus some more:
- A "model page" as the customer sees it would be useful, having a separate browser session to do so is cumbersome. (Apr-2011)
- The "model edit" pages as we see them now also have grown a bit beyond practical, some thoughts: (Apr-2011)
-- While it's cool for shopping customers, the whole "Choose a material" and "Related products" take up a lot space which could be more useful for editing things related to the model. [est. time: 30 min to exclude from view]
-- For years I have been watching the "Private Galleries" bit on the model page, I assume this has been superseded by "shop sections"? Anyhow, as long as its not used, why not hide it? [est time: 5 min to remove some HTML]
-- Some sort of mini material matrix/list on the product page, so we can see all material markups for that model and use check boxes to enable/disable materials. Also instead of the sluggish "Not available in:" stuff
- Reverse the awkward "Not available in" / "Add to unavailable" logic to the more logical "Model is designed for / printable in" [est. time: 1 day to reverse logic]
- for private models, on order rejection, do not fiddle with the materials list, do not set to "Not available" [est. time: 30 min to add an IF]
- overall flow and content of emails, subject, order numbers, model titles: (Apr-2011) [est time: 2 days to review and repair them all]
-- consistent order numbers in each and every message ex. "Your model has been shipped" has no order number at all
ex. "Your order 36794 at Shapeways" and "Shapeways | Order 133629 was cancelled" have no apparent relation
-- consistent, sortable subject lines in each and every message
ex. "Your order 36794 at Shapeways"and "Shapeways | Order 133629 was cancelled" cannot be sorted by any means
-- a consistent information block in each and every message. Less blah-blah, more information
i.e. model number and names, order numbers, order dates, est. production dates, shipping dates, etc. etc.

Someone from shapeways team made a co-creator on my name/account... to "solve" a logged co-creator sale from July 30th (!) with the status "waiting for finishing" (i.e: the designer/me hasn't uploaded it it.. (only this designer didn't get any email about it nor is it on the to-do list ) instead of addressing this properly and locating the customer who made (and paid?) for it ....

plus the fact that i didn't get a reply to my email on this subject shows you how things start to deteriorate around here (or perhaps just for me.. )

Update dates when there are new delays with on going orders, maybe even send an email. Maybe hide the estimated info for now, then relaunch the feature when it can be updated to match status in order by order basis. People complained a bit about no info, but the complains seem stronger now that the info is obvious (and outdated).

Community-Verarschung*, big time.
First, they let us work for almost a week to put together a comprehensive, detailed list of undesirable features and other wishes. Not a single word from an official that everybody is wasting their time because of an upcoming update.

Then, on a Friday afternoon (!!!), they throw out a new release which obviously has more undesirable features than ever before.

I have a hard time to imagine anything with greater disrespect for the supporters and the community. Thank you very much.

Quote from a PM, sender not revealed

The fact that no one from shapeways team replies ... means one thing... we, shop owners, dont run the show here..

But yes, I agree, a heads up on upcoming features would be nice.
And don't forget Mike's respones:

Quote:

What a list! Just so ya know, this thread has been seen, and we'll be digging to see what's going on with known items, and add ones that aren't already on the to do list.

But I would expect it take some time to cross check lists.

And while we shop-owners might not run the show, I think Shapeways would have a pretty hard time without feedback

So keep posting constructive comments and ideas, and it can only help Shapeways to go in the direction we as a community feel best.

Since the beginning there has been a tremendous amount of changes updates and upgrades to the site.
Many, many requested features from the forum have been implemented and a enormous amount of bugs has been squashed.

The thing is, there is so much feedback these days.
And with increasing drama in threads (which imho only dilutes the information presented) it's harder to keep track of the more sane suggestions.

So I felt the need for a proper public overview of feature requests without too much emotion.

So I voluntarily started this thread to gain a sense of what the community wants and which bug fixes are most needed.
And I doubt this last release will address all items we gathered here.

I personally am looking forward to turning items from this list to green as "fixed/solved".

Anyway, I can only grin at the parallel developments and am mostly glad that stuff is happening.

Edit: Textual flow, improved wording. (it quite was early for a Saturday )

- The Invoice-PDFs show no text on my OSX 10.7 when opened with Preview.app. Maybe check font-embedding and encoding.

And generally I have to add:
Why not do three things?
1 - Get some proper, new servers
2 - Get someone who has real knowledge about servers and html, php, js, java, ruby and SQL
3 - Make a live and a test-server, beta test first, then deploy in 2 months

I dont wanna hassle the shapeways team but you are at a point where you have to ask yourself if you still know what you are doing, or let me say it like this: are you up to the task?

Tonight we saw a lot of bugs popping up in a fresh interface - from AJAX to jQuery, CSS, PHP and so on.
Either the previous admin changed a lot of options on the server to make the original page work or the new admin has no experience in setting up large scale sites.

While a lot of the bugs are just UI related, one might wonder what Robert'); DROP TABLE Shopitems;-- would comment on that matter if you catch my drift...

Good to have the previous version back - and PLEASE do a beta test!
Me and a lot of other community-members would LOVE to help you with anything you require - as you can see in this thread.
So make a beta-server, let us play with it, finish design, UI and then harden it. After all that - deploy the site and enjoy the positive feedback.

Oh and btw: The above mishaps are management-faults, not the employees' faults!

Edit:

Quote:

The fact that no one from shapeways team replies ... means one thing... we, shop owners, dont run the show here..

No that means they all had a rather unpleasant, frustrating night and finally reverted back to normal and went to sleep. Only way to handle it.

I have a LONG history of success in asking for software upgrades in my DayJob. It is only through generating/maintaining such a list that you ever get any headway.

It would be nice if someone from SW would respond with reasonability checks and time estimates to do the various items. Beyond that, (sometime soon) we need to re-order the list with our desired priorities.

I can share one secret of my success.. make sure that the items on the list are descriptive enough of the change you wish to be made, or add links to full descriptions of the items.

An example of this is item #32. "Excel/CSV Import/Export Feature" - a developer who has not been paying attention is going to look at this and say "Export What?" Do you want to import/export the Forum threads or do you want to export the Materials list? Remember.. "we" have been too close to these topics, and "we" know of what we speak, but the item description needs to be explicit enough to let the developers know that we mean "Import/Export the Shop Inventory List". FYI.. is this a duplicate with #23?

I've seen it many times before.. such a list is built, and they'll decide that it needs to be addressed, and to do so, they need to throw another programmer into the mix. Unfortunately, the newbie looks at the list and says "do what?" because they don't have the background behind what went into the request.

Secret #2: If possible, assign financial impact. Example: Item #4 "To All". I have 150 items in my shop. If it took 60 seconds to update each one, thats 2.5 hours. At US minimium wage, that's $18.13 of markup I'm wasting every time I have to do an update of the entire shop. I'd be happy to pay for one hour of programmer time to fix it once and for all.

Note to Moderators: I think "The List" should be in one forum thread of it's own, and all comments to this subject should be in another independent thread.

[Updated on: Sat, 27 August 2011 14:19 UTC]

Patience, Persistance, Politeness - the 3Ps will help us get us to Perfect Printed Products

In the meantime, another one to add:
- in the product page, have a checkbox to indicate if hooks are to be added to the package for earrings (and later necklace for pendants, as soon as necklaces are re-introduced).

BF: Bugfix
A Bug has to be fixed. Normally needs a priority. 1: Show Stopper 2: Bad but Workaround possible 3: Nice to haveCR: Change Request
Do something already available in another way.
1: Serious Change 2:Important Change 3:Nice to haveFR: Feature Request
Add something new
1: We need it 2: Important 3:Nice to have

FR: Report sales without markup

CR: Fix markup matrix for large shops: Breakdown per section / 10 rows per page to speed up / Hide models not for sale/Show only model not for sale.

CR: Make separate page of old shop-inventory, current old version has reload issues.

FR: Allow edit of shop-section names

FR: Allow sorting of shop-sections

CR: Long model names in order overview.

CR: Allow to move an object at the end/beginning of the list in the new product inventory and to move it to the next/previous "page", exactly as in the old inventory (a page could be a group of 8 objects for instance): one position at a time is not really efficient.

FR: Allow more than two lines of products in the old inventory

FR: Allow the editing of picture caption in product page (not only at upload time)

FR: Allow sorting of pictures in product page

FR: Allow more than one video in the product page

CR: Full model names in shipping email

FR: Differentiation between customer and personal orders in shipping email

FR: Make download button available for shop-owners on co-creator models.

BF: Fix that models can't be updated, if "available in material" list is empty. (the (no suitable material/size error)

BF: Fix co-creator theme sort, sort by name/price does not work as expected.

CR: Improve voting system (moderated)

FR: Excel/CSV export/import feature, so we can mass edit all data for all models offline.

BF: Impossible to order co-creator items when "Listed on site" option is un-set. (private co-creator?)

CR: Shapeways should not cancel co-creator orders without contacting the designer, allowing to fix the error

BF: Fix the Material filter in the Gallery's Product (see for instance the category dice, where you will see that all dice seem to be available in any material, which they are not.

BF: Fix the Category selection, it is not consistent: for the first sub-category it is OK if you check the category and then the sub-category, but for the second if you check first a category you cannot check any of its sub-category anymore.

FR: Allow URL with brackets in the forum posts or remove any bracket from Shapeways URL's, because brackets break links.

BF: Fix count between brackets in shops section, the amount currently does not correlate with actual amount of public items. Magics jewels contains 27 items, page right bottom says 29

BF: Co-creator bug: sometimes an item from order overview does not appear on todo-list and designer does not get an email with link. The current fix/work-around is not clear.

FR: A "model page" as the customer sees, having a separate browser session to do so is cumbersome.

CR: The "model edit" pages as we see them now also have grown a bit beyond practical : "Choose a material" and "Related products" take up a lot space which could be more useful for editing things related to the model.

CR: The "Private Galleries" bit on the model page, has been superseded by "shop sections"? If not not used, why not hide it?

FR: Some sort of mini material matrix/list on the product page, so we can see all material markups for that model and use check boxes to enable/disable materials. Also instead of the sluggish "Not available in:" stuff.

CR: Reverse the awkward "Not available in" / "Add to unavailable" logic to the more logical "Model is designed for / printable in".

CR: For private models, on order rejection, do not fiddle with the materials list, do not set to "Not available".

CR: Consistent order numbers in each and every message ex. "Your model has been shipped" has no order number at all
ex. "Your order 36794 at Shapeways" and "Shapeways | Order 133629 was cancelled" have no apparent relation

CR: Consistent, sortable subject lines in each and every message
ex. "Your order 36794 at Shapeways"and "Shapeways | Order 133629 was cancelled" cannot be sorted by any means.

CR: A consistent information block in each and every message. Less blah-blah, more information: model number and names, order numbers, order dates, est. production dates, shipping dates, etc. etc.

FR: Order time in order overview

FR: Geographical location in order overview

FR: Allow youtube as image replacement at top of product page/Allow placement of youtube video in description using [video] or similar tag.

CR: Update dates when there are new delays with on going orders, maybe even send an email.

CR: In the product page, have a checkbox to indicate if hooks are to be added to the package for earrings (and later necklace for pendants, as soon as necklaces are re-introduced).